Half the season gone, and 2025 feels like a chessboard set on fire. McLaren are painting the grid papaya-orange, Verstappen is tilting at windmills, and Ferrari still haven’t given Charles Leclerc the car he deserves. Time to call it like it is: winners, losers, and the lost souls in between.
Winners
McLaren (Team)
Full respect: they let their drivers fight, and fight hard. It’s easier when you’ve got a car this dominant, but still—no fake “multi-21” politics, just clean gloves-off racing.
Oscar Piastri
Championship leader, but it doesn’t come easy. Needs luck, needs focus, and his garage needs to remember the only scoreboard that matters is him versus Norris. Doesn’t matter if he finishes 2nd, 5th, or 10th—so long as he’s ahead of Lando.
Lando Norris
Yes, he’s sharper this year, even better than Verstappen at times—but I’m still not buying the full package. Against a less experienced teammate he still shows gaps. Good season, but not flawless.
George Russell
Extracts every drop out of that Mercedes, always in the right place when others mess up. Six podiums already. The unfair part? Still no contract in hand.
Williams & Alex Albon
Bright blue revival. Albon looks like a driver reborn, Williams feels like a proper midfield force again. Unlike Sainz, who’s still drifting in the wilderness, this duo has direction.
Sauber & Nico Hülkenberg
Finally not the basement team. Hülkenberg’s podium after 239 attempts was like motorsport karma finally paying out—late, but sweet.
Losers
Red Bull
This car is worse than anyone admits. The empire’s crumbling—technical regression, leadership chaos, Verstappen stranded without the ammo he needs.
Max Verstappen
A knight fighting windmills. Doing the impossible still isn’t enough. McLaren have simply outgunned him, and third place in the standings feels like exile.
Charles Leclerc
It hurts to watch. A brilliant driver stuck in a Ferrari that just won’t deliver. He deserves more—much more.
Lewis Hamilton
Another season written off. This generation of cars doesn’t suit him. He’s waiting for 2026 like it’s judgment day. If it doesn’t work out, don’t be shocked if Hamilton quietly leaves the paddock.
Kimi Antonelli
Nice rookie start, but lost something along the way. Let’s hope Mercedes can help him rediscover his feel before the hype dies down.
Aston Martin
Big resources, zero spark. It’s hard to root for a team this bloated and underwhelming.
McLaren have turned 2025 into a two-man play, and the rest of the grid are just extras. Piastri and Norris are rewriting the title fight in papaya orange, and while their duel is still respectful, the tension is building. One misstep, one strategy call gone wrong, and that polite rivalry could snap into something nastier. Behind them, Verstappen has been dragged back to earth. No longer the untouchable machine, he’s fighting windmills in a Red Bull that feels lost in its own identity crisis. That, more than anything, has shifted the center of gravity of Formula 1.
Ferrari, meanwhile, are stuck in the worst kind of loop. Leclerc keeps proving he’s elite, but the car keeps proving it’s not. Hamilton’s move to Maranello, once hyped as a fairytale, looks more like a miscast—another season gone, another chance wasted. Mercedes aren’t flawless either, but Russell’s ability to squeeze podiums out of thin air shows why he should already have a contract in his pocket. Antonelli flashed promise, then faded, but that’s a rookie’s right. Further down, Williams and Albon are one of the sport’s few unambiguous feel-good stories, while Sauber finally remembered what progress looks like. And then there’s Aston Martin—big money, no soul, impossible to love.
So where does that leave us? At the halfway mark, the picture is clear: McLaren have the fastest car, the fiercest rivalry, and the only true claim to this year’s title. Everyone else is stuck in their own subplot—some redemptive, some tragic, some just dull. The second half of 2025 will decide whether Norris can shake off the doubts, whether Piastri can hold his nerve, and whether Red Bull or Ferrari can stop being their own worst enemies. Right now, it feels like the rest of the grid is just waiting for the lights to go out on this papaya-colored show.
